The Netherfield ball is fatal to Jane Bennet’s interest, innocent as Jane is of any of the family misdemeanors on the occasion. Bingley has to leave the next day for London, from which he certainly means to return soon. But his sisters and friend suddenly make up their minds to follow him, with the intention, if they can manage it, that the household shall not come back to Netherfield for the winter. Caroline Bingley communicates the news of the step, which takes the whole neighbourhood by surprise, in a plausible note to the victim, Jane.
Elizabeth reads between the lines, and discerns the truth, that the sisters and Mr. Darcy have at last taken alarm, and are bent on putting an end to the attachment on Mr. Bingley’s part before it has gone the length of a declaration, by detaining the naturally light-hearted, easily-impressed young fellow among the excitements and distractions of the town, away from Netherfield.
The sequel shows the conspirators successful. Sweet Jane Bennet is ruthlessly jilted, while bearing no malice, and insisting in her confidential intercourse with her sister that the affair has been all a mistake, caused by her fancy, the partiality of her friends, and Bingley’s amiable desire to please. She declares she is sure she will soon forget it, and be as happy as before.
In the meantime, Jane has to endure the mortification of hearing her mother lament, openly and loudly, over the ill-usage which her daughter has received.
The modern match-making mother has more guile, if she is not more delicate-minded, than to betray her feelings in a similarly unreserved fashion.
Elizabeth hotly resents the wrong done to her dear and gentle sister, is furious with Darcy and Miss Bingley, and begins to despise Bingley for proving a mere tool in the hands of his friends, whose interference in his affairs has been utterly unjustifiable.
Elizabeth and Wickham’s mutual preference goes no further. She says afterwards that every girl within visiting distance of Meryton lost her senses for a time where the winning young officer was concerned. But she herself did not lose her senses to such an extent as to be beyond recovering them; though the only remonstrance which reached her was on the indiscretion of allowing herself to be drawn into an attachment and engagement with a penniless officer, while she herself was little better provided for in a worldly sense, so that their marriage must either be impossible, or an event long deferred.
The warning, no doubt, has a mercenary ring, especially for young readers; but such worldly considerations were simply held reasonable in Jane Austen’s days, and reckless disregard of consequences and headstrong wilfulness in marriage, as in any other affair in life, were not qualities held up for admiration.
At the same time, Jane Austen was too true a woman not to deprecate what amounted to cold-blooded, calculating caution in marriage. More than once she exposes its fallacy and danger, and she has devoted a whole novel to show the injury which may be inflicted by over-carefulness on the part of a well-intentioned friend, and by over-submissiveness on the side of an amiable girl, in breaking off an engagement with a young man who had only his high character and hope of rising in his profession as hostages to fortune.
Elizabeth Bennet and Wickham’s mere liking for each other rather dwindles away after a time than meets with a sharp check; and Elizabeth considers that if they had been sufficiently in love they might have justifiably faced the risks of a long engagement and a poor marriage—even while she tries to be so hardened and cynical a philosopher as to think and say that Wickham is doing what he ought in withdrawing his attentions gradually from her, and setting himself to pay his addresses to a girl in Meryton who has nothing in particular to distinguish her save that she has recently inherited a fortune. This worldly argument is forced work by Elizabeth, and when she is a very little older and wiser she recants, and is affronted by the coarseness of sentiment into which her determination to be indifferent and reasonable had led her.